FIRM LETS YOU TAKE THIS RHINOSEROS AND STUFF IT

Editor's note: This story is being published again because a typographical error rendered it unreadable in Sunday's edition.

CHICAGO, Ill. -- Russ Felker III has always gone his own way. Twenty years ago, when personal computers were just a speck on the Silicon Valley horizon, 7-year-old Russ already had one. While his three siblings all have theatrical aspirations, he was enticed by technology and business. Felker even found a different way to go to college, graduating last month from the online division of the University of Phoenix with a degree in business information systems.

Now the Cape Girardeau native and Chicago entrepreneur has started a business that sells people stuffed animals they make themselves.

The idea occurred to him while watching a TV show with his wife, Monique, about romantic places to kiss. The couple in the show took a day trip to the factory that makes Vermont Teddy Bears. The factory has a small retail space where people on the tour can stuff their own bear. Both of them loved the idea -- especially stuffed animal collector Monique.

Two weeks after starting discussions about the possibilities with his business partner, Felker read a newspaper story about a St. Louis-based company called the Build-A-Bear Workshop. Subsequently he learned of a similar California company called Basic Brown Bears, Inc.

But Felker and company proceeded with the idea, intent on making their stuffed animal enterprise different. Friends 2B Made opened May 21 at the Gurnee Mills outlet mall in a northern Chicago suburb. Instead of the bears the other companies concentrate on, it also offers bears, moose, tigers, frogs, lions, cows and many others."If you want to choose between 50 Teddy bears you can go to Build-A-Bear," Felker says. "We're the only ones who carry a rhinoceros."Besides stuffing the animals with an employee's help and receiving a birth certificate, customers can dress the animals any way they like.

The decor at Friends 2B Made also is distinctive. Where the other stores resemble workshops, it looks like the outdoors inside. A mural depicts different kinds of ecosystems, including meadows, streams an African savanna and the ocean.

Not surprisingly, in trying to differentiate Friends 2B Made Felker devised a technological solution. A computer chip implanted in each animal allows customers to record a 12-second message. Some people record "Get well." One person used a stuffed animal to ask someone to the prom."Needless to say he got the date," Felker said.

The store is doing well and a lease has been signed on another in Philadelphia. But a story about Felker appeared in Wednesday's Chicago Tribune because the stuff-your-own-animal business has become unfriendly. His and other companies that sell make-your-own stuffed animals have received letters from Build-A-Bear Workshop threatening them with lawsuits. They are accused of violating trademarks and copyrights.

Felker says the owner of Build-A-Bear, the industry leader, trademarked the Friends 2B Made name after she heard his company had rented space in the mall.

This sort of friction troubles him."I got into this business because this was going to be a fun business, one where we could go to work and feel good about ourselves," he says. "Getting the letter took us back a step."But Felker doesn't sound discouraged and hasn't lost his sense of humor."We're selling the ability to come in and create something. It really makes somebody happy when they go through the process," he said.

And introducing something as cheerless as a lawsuit into such a whimsical business "seems somewhat oxymoronic."